Pietas
by Tai'shar Westernesse
Summary: Bristan Marks is a major in the First Order Security Bureau, ready for a promotion. Jiers Dalay is a former New Republic pilot, now a First Order mechanic, whose only wish is to recover his droid and scrub away his own cowardice and treachery. The mysterious appearance of a girl with knowledge of the future could be the key to both their desires—if the galaxy survives that long.


Disclaimer: Everything you recognize is Disney's; I own only the OCs. Huge thanks to Larfen J. Stocke, esq., for betaing. I'd like to dedicate this story to frodogenic, for showing me how good Star Wars fanfiction can be.

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 _Wars and a man I sing—an exile driven on by Fate…_

-Book One of _The Aeneid_

Major Bristan Marks was really rather straightforward for a man who dealt almost exclusively in lies. Lies, he reflected, were his day job. His mission. He spread them, collected them from the enemy, and buried them in the heads of anyone the First Order wanted on their side. Lies, all of them.

He was going to be living a lie soon. Deep cover op. Deep. "Look-Leia-Organa-Solo-in-the-eyes-and-don't-blink" deep. He should have been more worried about it than he was, but one of the things he'd learned after dealing in lies for years was that emotions were really just lies, too. Lies you told others. Lies you told yourself. Made it a bit hard to feel anything, when you knew it was all so… malleable. Subjective.

Not everything in his life was subjective, though. Protocol was strikingly objective; sometimes a little too much, in his opinion. In his subjective opinion. Still, this was the sixth time his flight instructor had brought him to the hanger bay to drill him on various New Republic (everyone wanted him to call it "the Rebellion" still, but even people outside the First Order Security Bureau knew that was a lie) starship types. There wasn't even a reason to see them in person; they could just as easily be ensconced in their usual conference-turned-training room, looking at holovids of the same ships.

Holovids weren't good enough for Lieutenant Colonel Driggs, unfortunately. Bristan was walking a half pace behind him through the hangar bay, avoiding various pilots; crewers; and stormtrooper units, who were using the massive space to practice their maneuvers while the ship glided through hyperspace. The enormous room was always echoing with human and mechanical noises, and smelled faintly of ozone and engine grease. Driggs was a corpulent man with thinning white hair and a mustache that, Bristan prayed, would never thin. The thing was magnificent. Driggs had precious few good qualities, and that mustache was one of them. Bristan found himself rubbing his own chin, wishing that whatever loophole that allowed senior officers to grow facial hair could be extended down throughout the ranks. It really wasn't fair.

It was only when Driggs glanced at him expectantly that Bristan realized his superior officer had been talking. "Oh, undoubtedly, sir," Bristan said, adopting the youthful, slightly over eager tone young crewers used when they had no idea what their superior officer was talking about, but wanted to flatter them.

Driggs's glance turned flat. "That might work on some other officers, Marks," he said, "but not on me. When did you stop paying attention?"

Bristan thought back over the last few minutes. "When we left the conference room, sir," he said.

Driggs sighed. "Lucky for you, you've heard most of it before," he said, "but we'll take it from the top. Try to pay attention, Marks. I'd hate to lose you to a rookie mistake."

As Driggs once again launched into his spiel on New Republic field protocol, Bristan wished he had a competent superior. A true officer wouldn't have let him off so easily. A true officer, he thought, would have had so many useful things to tell him that he never would have dreamed of daydreaming. Driggs, however, was neither strict nor useful. Bristan was well aware of his own faults. He knew what lies were, and he knew when he told them to himself and to others, and he'd stopped lying to himself about his own abilities years ago. He was not a focused or a diligent person unless circumstances forced him to be. In concept, that seemed a terrible sort of person to work an intelligence job, but it wasn't so bad. After all, circumstances were what one believed them to be, so he only had to tell himself that the circumstances required something of him, and it worked. Generally. But he always had the worry in the back of his head that if he did that too often, it would stop working, so he only used it for really important things.

In the field, particularly with an op like this, the circumstances would require him to be focused and diligent. If he failed, he would die. That was why he wasn't too worried. He'd be far less likely to die if his training was effective, though, and Driggs didn't inspire him to do anything well other than create excuses. And even then, it wasn't much inspiration; the man had no definition for the word "discipline."

They were at the edges of the room now, in the shadows of the numerous TIE fighters nesting in their metal racks. Straight ahead was the selection of captured New Republic ships tucked into one of the hangar bay's massive corners. He decided to tap into Drigg's drone briefly. "—but speeders only report in every half hour, unlike our every quarter hour, so if you end up piloting one, make sure to remember not to report in too early—"

And he was out again. Really, how likely was it that anyone in the chain of command would dislike too many reports, rather than too few? So long as he—

His thought cut off abruptly as something unseen fell onto his shoulders, bringing him straight to the ground. He barely got his hands up in time to keep his face from smashing into the metal floor at full speed. His forehead still bounced off the grating, but not with enough force to do any lasting damage other than a livid bruise.

Of more interest to him, however, was the thing that had impacted him. Whatever it was was lying across his shoulders and upper back. He heaved himself up and slightly to the side, throwing whatever it was off of him. The thing yelped—a person. A female? Had one of the engineers fallen off of one of the nearby starships? He scrambled to his feet, feeling only slightly woozy, and turned to look at his prone assailant.

She rolled onto her back just as he turned to look at her. He was struck by how very wide her eyes were, how pale her face was. She was panting, mouth slightly open, a strand of brown hair trailing out of it. She didn't seem to notice. Her eyes darted between him and Driggs, who was standing a few feet away, eyes also wide. Him, Driggs. Him, Driggs. Bristan noticed she wasn't wearing a crewer's uniform.

"Hey!" came a filtered voice. Stormtrooper. Bristan's instincts put him at five meters behind him, slightly to the left. Footsteps—squad. Six troopers. They would have been able to see the girl's fall, judge what happened. He glanced over his shoulder: he was correct. "How did you do that? Get on your knees!"

The girl had propped herself up on one elbow, and was now staring at the troopers, a look of abject horror on her face. Her mouth worked soundlessly.

"Do what?" Bristan asked, glancing up at the nearby docked TIE-fighters. He thought he saw a brief flicker of movement—perhaps another mechanic checking to see what was happening. He returned his eyes to the girl. "Fall off a ship?"

The stormtrooper ignored him as the squad pushed past Bristan and Driggs, forming a half circle around the girl, who had risen unsteadily to her knees and was still staring at all of them as if all her worst nightmares had come true.

Driggs tugged him back slightly from the unit, and said, under the lead stormtrooper's demands for information, "She didn't fall off a ship, Marks. I was looking up. She just… appeared. From nowhere." He looked stunned.

Oh.

That changed a few things.

Bristan's mind stuttered briefly to a halt, then roared back to life. The squad leader was reaching for the handcuffs at his belt. He had to act quickly.

Without preamble, he thrust his way between two of the stormtroopers, angling himself so that he wasn't quite between the leader and the girl, but close enough. "Sir," he said, "she fell on me. I'm a major in the First Order Security Bureau; I have the power to arrest, and she is under my jurisdiction."

He heard a quiet "good show," from Driggs, and promised himself that he'd dismiss the man as soon as he outranked him.

The squad leader paused. Technically, he could contest that charge, but squad-leaders were generally selected by how well they could make a group follow someone else's orders, not for their own intellectual or tactical strengths. Bristan's superior rank (despite the fact that he wasn't in the military's chain of command) gave him an edge. He could also just shove Bristan aside, which would be a pretty stormtrooper thing to do, but the fact that he was pausing at all indicated that this was unlikely.

"Acknowledged," he said after a moment. He took a half-step back, joining his own half-circle of stormtroopers. "She's all yours."

Satisfied, he turned back to the girl, unclipping his own binders from his belt. Her eyes were still the size of saucers. The piece of hair was still trailing from her mouth. She looked like she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing, like at any moment someone would shout "Surprise!" and the joke would be over. He clicked the binders open, and her eyes fastened onto them, growing even larger.

"Hands," he ordered.

She continued to stare, tears now welling in her eyes.

" _Hands_ ," he repeated, injecting some of that old-ISB iron into his voice. There were precious few of that sterling old guard left in the First Order, but they were terrors, every one.

She began shaking her head, at first in a small, slow motion, but then violently, her lips peeling back from her gritted teeth in a terrified grimace. She shifted, frantic, trying to stand.

Before the stormtroopers behind him could raise their rifles to fire, Bristan drew his side arm and shot her. She collapsed, unconscious—his blaster had been on stun, as he always had it. He reholstered his sidearm and drew his commlink, keying for Medical. "This is Major Marks. We have a stunned prisoner in the Hangar Bay. Female, late teens. Send a stretcher and appropriate personnel, over."

"Acknowledged, Major," said a neutral male voice. "We'll be there in approximately one minute. Over and out."

Bristan put away his commlink, looking down at his new prize. Teleportation. And not only teleportation—teleportation onto a ship in _hyperspace_.

Driggs shuffled up to Bristan's side, also looking down at the girl. He clapped Bristan on the shoulder, a smile appearing below the mustache. "We've netted ourselves a fine catch, Bristan," he said.

Bristan had expected this, of course. "Yes, I have," he said. "If you play your cards right, I might sometimes mention you were with me when I arrested her."

Driggs's face darkened, and he let his hand drop from Bristan's shoulder. "You don't want to make an enemy out of me, boy," he said, voice lowering.

Bristan gave him a disgusted look. "It can't be worse than having you as a superior," he said. "Face it, Driggs: this is my prize. You don't have any sort of legal claim on it."

Driggs's face darkened yet further. "We'll see about that." He turned and stalked a few feet away, but remained there, watching with smoldering eyes.

Bristan saw the stretcher approaching across the hangar, crewers dodging out of its way. He knelt beside his prize and turned her so she was on her back, then began rifling through her pockets. He found a small, rectangular datapad in a garish purple case, which he pocketed, along with a fine old-style ink pen and some discarded wrappers. He stowed these as well. The stretcher was almost there, but as he was about to stand and get out of their way, his eyes caught on a flash of red enamel at her throat. He leaned in closer—and almost stopped his own heart.

She was wearing a symbol of the Rebellion.

Which meant the Rebellion had discovered teleportation.

Or… did it?

He stumbled to his feet to let the medical crew get her on the stretcher, his mind reeling. It clicked through various implications and scenarios, then came to a halt on a logical conclusion. He relaxed immediately. No—the Rebellion didn't have teleportation. How stupid would it be to send a single, unprepared agent onto an enemy ship—the _Finalizer_ , no less—wearing such a clear symbol? Besides, Bristan knew what confusion looked like, and that girl had been sincerely bewildered and terrified at her circumstances. She hadn't been sent. No, if he had to guess, there were three likely scenarios.

First, this could simply be one of the flukes of the universe, one of the thousands of unexplained phenomena that simply happened once and never again. He hoped that wasn't the case. Teleportation had long been the unattainable dream—the mythical "it could never happen." If it happened once, he hoped, it could be replicated.

The second possibility was that the Rebellion was experimenting with teleportation, and this was an accidental test run. Slightly more likely, but this girl didn't look like she was authorized near top-secret government experiments of that high a caliber. She wasn't even wearing a protective suit.

The third option was the most intriguing. A third party had discovered teleportation, and had sent the First Order a gift. Or a message. Either way, it seemed most likely that the girl was an unwilling, perhaps even an unwitting, messenger. She might need to be persuaded to talk.

The two-person medical team finally had her strapped into the floating stretcher, and Bristan followed them back to Medical, a slight smile tugging up one corner of his mouth. A way to free himself of Driggs, a prize that was sure to lead to promotion, and an interrogation on top of it all.

It was his lucky day.


End file.
